Tuesday, 26 January 2010

Yasmin And The Sack Question

It is gratifying that so many white British liberals have come out to defend shrouded Muslim women. Their generosity of spirit and messianic belief in liberty makes them recoil from a state ban on the burka.

Ooooh, is that sarcasm I detect, Yazza?

Here, we are reassured, such a ban would be impossible. OK, the bonkers UKIP lot and rabid BNP bang on about it; noisy nuisances, easily ignored. Liberals say it just isn't British to prohibit and limit the personal choices of freeborn citizens.

Well, it never used to be. But that hasn’t been true for some time now, as even Yasmin can’t have failed to notice.

Really? The British never accept any curtailment of individual preferences? So how has it come to pass that in this green and free land, we have more state surveillance and imposed restrictions and regulations than any other EU country ?

Beats me, Yasmin. Because enough of us voted in a supine bunch of troughing scum eager to suck up to every pressure group and EU policy body going, and not enough of us turned up to outvote them?

Why, we can't even take snaps in the streets without a hand of authority falling on the shoulder.

Well, no, actually, that’s not correct as a bunch of people gathered in Trafalgar Square this weekend to demonstrate, albeit without any media attention. And frankly, a professional journalist with integrity should know better than to perpetuate…

Oh, right. You don’t meet those criteria, do you?

Could it be that authoritarianism is not resisted because the British are naturally obedient, following social rules and legal sanctions? From queuing, to drink-drive laws, most of us do what is expected. We surrender personal autonomy, sometimes for reasons that are clearly for the greater good – the anti-smoking laws – and sometimes because our rulers, like all rulers, wish to grab more power.

But they are as invisible to you (when they demonstrate about something that doesn’t conform to your views) as those burka-clad women, aren’t they?

Naturists would love, I'm sure, to wander down Oxford Street, just window-shopping of course. They can't, because for most people that would be too much out there. Women in the full burka are the other side of that same coin. They give too little out there and, using passive violence, disconnect from the humanity around them.

Wearing a sack is ‘violent’, now?

You people who support the "freedom" to wear the burka, do you think anorexics and drug addicts have the right to choose what they do?

Yes, frankly.

Not because I wish them to die (I’ve nothing against anorexics) but because the consequences of stopping them are worse than what we have now.

This covering makes women invisible, invalidates their participatory rights and confirms them as evil temptresses. Does it stop men from raping them? Does it mean they have more respect in the home and enclaves? Like hell it does. I feel the same fury when I see Orthodox Jewish women in wigs, with their many children, living tightly proscribed lives.

I couldn’t care less what anyone wears. It’s none of my business.

On Thursday a woman in the cloak of darkness got off the Tube train and stepped on some toes as she rushed. The looks that followed, pure hatred, and then the mutters, some from other Asians: "Stupid women, giving us all a bad name. They should send them back."

Oh, wow…

Can anyone imagine how loud the screams would be should any of those comments have issued from the white passengers?

The French parliamentary commission has recommended adopting a ban on wearing the full veil in "public places" including hospitals, schools and on mass transit. Under the proposal, women appearing in government offices wearing a burqa could be denied visa and immigration services.

"The measure would force individuals not only to show their faces at the entrance to a public service area but also to maintain their faces uncovered for as long as they remain there," the report continued.

The commission rapporteur, Eric Raoult, told journalists: "We want to fight Islamic fundamentalism. And the burqa is a manifestation of that fundamentalism."